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Friday, August 24, 2012

Summer Recap

The countdown has begun! My summer ends at exactly 12:30 Wednesday afternoon...and I'm not super excited about it. Luckily I've already had some adventures; two trips to Mt. Hood, Oregon for summer training, a backpacking trip with my dad, a skiing venture at Logan Pass, and the first few hours of flight training to be eligible for a solo flight completed. I have lot's of stories to share, so I'll just add captions and explanations to my numerous pictures--which I hope are already worth a thousand words.

At the end of May my family took a vacation to somewhere warm for once: Key West. We actually stayed at a beach house on Sugarloaf Key.

Guess what I got for my birthday?

A spring storm on June 6th dumped 22 inches on the summit of Big Mountain! I woke up to this beautiful view on the morning of my birthday (I took this picture from my front porch).

After school ended I went to Mt. Hood for a five day race camp--three of which it was snowing sideways. My old coach Jeff Pickering was there (he now coaches the U.S. Women's Speed Team), and I had some valuable slalom training.

After leaving Hood I had the fever bad...

Find me!

Marina by the Going-to-the-Sun Road

I went on my first backpacking trip with my Dad in July. The approach was a 6 mile hike that gained 1800 feet up a Lake Mountain (switchbacks), and lost 1800 feet down the un-trailed Chain Lakes basin on the other side. The last quarter mile or so was a black-diamond-steep 400 foot descent through a ridiculous amount of bushes--the only animal sign we ever saw was of bears and humans (I guess the deer and elk are too smart to be up there).

The Cutthroats were everywhere!

...and delicious

In mid-July I was surprised with the opportunity to return to Mt. Hood and train with some of the best coaches in the country at a six-day Western Region camp. After the first day of slalom training at dryland, I was running backwards through an agility course and tripped, spraining my wrist. I had no grip strength for a couple days after, and was stuck doing this:

The final two days of the camp we trained giant slalom, which I could actually do! The problem with slalom was that the shock of hitting each left gate with my pole-guard caused my sprained left wrist to hurt very badly, whereas in giant slalom there is no gate-blocking involved. The training I took part in ended up being very very valuable; we were working on arcing the turn above the gate rather than skidding the whole top part of the turn.

Between and during all of these summer things I was working on finishing next year's English. I used an online program to get 'r' done in just 10 weeks. I did this because I want to graduate high school early--whether a semester or year early I do not know yet. All the homework hours I put this summer were absolutely worth it.

After my last trip to Mt. Hood I started up flying lessons, and I've been enjoying them tons. I hope to solo before I have to focus nearly all my time and energy on school and skiing. The pictures below I took from my dad's Aerostar Twin-Piston over glacier park. The plane was very useful in scouting out our backpacking trips to make sure the lakes weren't still frozen!

Bowman Lake of Glacier National Park

A view of the park from the north-east reveals all of its glaciers

The peaks of Glacier received a dusting of snow last night in an early winter storm--a peek of what's just around the corner ;) I couldn't help but to drive to Logan Pass this afternoon and take some pictures! It was only 42 degrees up there and the frigid wind was gusting...

Heaven's Peak from the Going-to-the-Sun Road

Telophoto of a huge chunk of glacial ice slowly sliding down the face of Heaven's Peak

Wild flowers are sprouting up where ten feet of snow covered the ground in July